ResearchMatch.org Is Cool -The Idea, the Website and even the Logo! Is This Really From The NIH?
November 10, 2009 by Chris Hempel
Filed under Featured Stories
Great news from the NIH today — a new service called ResearchMatch.org was announced. ResearchMatch.org is a national research study recruitment registry announced to help match volunteers with researchers who want them to participate in research studies.
The registries matching model compliments Clinicaltrials.gov (a website that needs a serious facelift!) but has one fundamental difference. ResearchMatch.org places the burden of connecting the right volunteers with the right study on the researchers, whereas Clinicaltrials.gov asks volunteers to identify the trials that could work for them.
I am going to have my entire family sign up to be part of ResearchMatch. Imagine if everyone did the same. Researchers could easily find people to participate in studies which in turn would speed up finding treatments and cures for diseases. One of the biggest problems in research studies today is that a certain number of people are needed to participate in order to find answers but often times there are too few volunteers. This is a problem we face in Niemann Pick Type C disease — with only 500 children in the world with the disease we have limited volunteers and a small cohort for clinical studies.
Many things created by our government tend to be overly complicated or fall short of their promise. However, ResearchMatch is a smart idea and the website is user friendly and easy to navigate. In fact, the website is so nice compared to other government websites I have visited that it actually looks like someone in the private sector created it! Even the logo is cool!
The process to sign up to participate in ResearchMatch was simple and took me about 5 minutes to complete. Anyone can join too — many research studies are looking for healthy volunteers or “controls.”
Join today and spread the word and contribute to the greater good — https://www.researchmatch.org/
ResearchMatch has grown quite a bit since its launch almost 2 years ago. There are almost 20,000 registered volunteers on ResearchMatch. That is exciting because many volunteers and researchers have already been connected. HOWEVER, the number of children registered is very low. If every parent would consider registering his/her child (healthy children as well as children with specific conditions)in ResearchMatch, the future for all children would be much brighter. Treatments for children must be tested in children. Our children have the right to research designed to meet their specific needs. Children are not little adults and their doctors need to make decisions about their care that is based on results from studies that included children. Register your child today on ResearchMatch.org.
ResearchMatch is working. Volunteers and researchers are being connected in a safe and convenient way. This will certainly help speed discoveries. There are over 7200 registered volunteers right now, and it would be wonderful if there were 1000 times that many. The time it takes to recruit participants for studies is what slows the process of advancement of medicine. This can help.
This is very good news! Unfortunatelly, we cannot take part on this yet – they accept only US residents.